More and more, the desire grows in me simply to walk around, greet people, enter their homes, sit on their doorsteps, play ball, throw water, and be known as someone who wants to live with them. It is a privilege to have the time to practice this simple ministry of presence. Still, it is not as simple as it seems. My own desire to be useful, to do something significant, or to be part of some impressive project is so strong that soon my time is taken up by meetings, conferences, study groups, and workshops that prevent me from walking the streets. It is difficult not to have plans, not to organize people around an urgent cause, and not to feel that you are working directly for social progress. But I wonder more and more if the first thing shouldn’t be to know people by name, to eat and drink with them, to listen to their stories and tell your own, and to let them know with words, handshakes, and hugs that you do not simply like them, but truly love them (Nouwen 1994).

            Nouwen’s quote while beautiful haunts me. It is the life I want; the life I seek in the exurbs but somehow it seems elusive. I live in the American exurbs – an area that appears to promise everything, even the beauty of a Nouwenesque utopian street walk but that often yields dysfunction and loneliness. Many of the inhabitants of the American exurbs find their lives over run by individualism, consumerism, and materialism (Halter and Smay 2008) which leads to lives disconnected from God and other humans.[1] Human beings tend to flee from pressure (Brewin 2007)
and in the case of American expansion of the latter 20^th century, people have fled the pressure of the cities to have their dreams in the exurbs. In the exurbs, where people live, there is a need for people to see who God really is and the kind of life that God created each of us to live. It is into this setting that I believe missional communities must emerge.

Missional communities are a new concept on the global and American religious landscape. Because of their youth, there is not a wealth of information available that defines or explains what missional communities are. “Missional” has become a buzz word with “church” “community” or “communities” often tagged onto it but to date there is still a lack of solid definition on what it means to be a missional community. I often find these terms interchanged and used in the writings of many missional leaders but the presence of a definition is elusive. I intend for my literature review to step into that void.

            So what does it mean to be a missional community? Missional communities are not home groups or small groups, though the home group movement did pave they way for missional communities as they opened peoples minds to the idea of opening their homes (Boren 2007). Missional communities are not house churches, as they don’t take on all the roles of a local congregation. Depending on the setting many missional communities will practice service, worship, taking the Eucharist, studying and gathering for fellowship together but more often than not one or more of these elements are missing. Missional communities are not mission organizations that exist to perform specific functions even they do often take on a role of service.

            Missional communities are for sure missional. They are groups of connected people that see themselves as sent – on mission. Alan Hirsch in an 2008 Leadership Journal article says that this means that being on mission is the originating impulse and the organizing principle of the group (Hirsch 2008). This group of people sees themselves with a God given task wherever they are.

Synthesizing the literature reviewed with my own personal experience I believe a missional community to be a group of people who are committed to a way of life that leads to knowing, serving and loving each other, God and their shared locale. These communities often gather for these purpose and are identified by how they behave toward each other (Gibbs 2009)
– not by how, when or where they worship. In our setting the community is strongly bound to a Philippians 2 type of commitment to each member and the surrounding context in that they each consider other people more important than themselves. Humility and sacrificial love are markers.

A regularly scheduled meeting or event doesn’t define missional communities. People who are part of missional communities don’t see themselves as going to a church community; they are the community wherever they are. These communities are differentiated from other types of groups, communities or gatherings because of the posture that they take as a way of life. They may gather, they may worship, they may serve, they may study, they may pray but all of these things are just part of who they are as they go into their context. No one of these elements defines them.

Within just a few centuries John Chrysostom spoke highly and often about the need for Christians to be hospitable. His limits on hospitality were said to have been nearly boundless (Pohl 2006) . Chrysostom often reminded the wealthy among the church of God’s outlook on the self-indulgent. Using Luke 16:14-31 as the text the audience is drawn in as the rich man in the story. Chrysostom would later give the famous image of the almsgiver as a harbor for people who are in need. “A harbor receives all who have encountered shipwreck, and frees them from danger…So you likewise, when you see on earth the man who has encountered the shipwreck of poverty, do not judge him, do not seek an account of his life, but free him from his misfortune.” (Husbands and Greenman 2008)

In The Rise of Christianity by Rodney Stark paints a picture of a hospitable church appears that would no doubt be appealing to the pagan cultures that hosted them. One of the cities he studies is Antioch, where the followers of Christ were first called Christians. This city was a missional launching pad for much of what the church did and became the home base of Christianity early in the Christian story but this city had it’s issues. During the 600 years of Roman rule it was taken by unfriendly forces eleven times; it was put to siege two other times but resisted and did not fall; it burned to the ground on at least four occasions; it suffered from hundreds of small earthquakes and eight that leveled the city to the ground; three severe plagues hit the city with at least 25 percent mortality rates and finally, it experienced 5 harsh famines. In all at least 41 natural or social disasters hit the city during that time. It was if they experienced 9/11 over and over again. Large numbers of people obviously died and large numbers came and went but the Christians stayed and they formed a community that stood in the face of the fear and misery that this city so often experienced. They cared for the sick that were left to die. They cared for orphans and widows when Greco-Roman culture would allow these people to be lost to slavery or death. They took care of the homeless and offered family to those who had none. They responded quickly to needs and it was in this way that they won the city. All of these acts of hospitality helped to create a family fabric among Christians and aided in the creation of disciples who took the Christian story outward into the world (Stark 1997) .

Augustine as well chimed in on the conversation in his time arguing that hospitable acts fit into a network of need. The giver and the recipient were in need before God. While God does not need what the giver has he has taken up a position in the place of the needy and the poor. God is there with them and as we serve them we serve our king (Augustine)

Benedict of Nursia, St. Benedict, was also a proponent of hospitality. His writings would form the churches most well accepted and understood principles of hospitality which would literally last and function for the past 1500 years (O’Gorman) . His Chapter 53, entitled The Reception of Guests, is the foundation of all western European religious hospitality and would influence church and monasteries for centuries[1]. His way of life focused on communal living, physical labor and the giving of alms and food to the poor.

Monasteries across the world would pick up on these practices and to this day give these accommodations to those in their surroundings. In the medieval period the monasteries took up comprehensive houses and even added guest housing for those who were in transit or in need of respite (Lenoir 1852) .

As the church expanded westward across Europe with the Roman Empire there were often struggles in reaching out to groups of peoples who were seen as barbarians. Some groups were just written off as unable to receive the gospel due to their barbaric state. It is into a setting that was perceived to be unredeemable that St. Patrick used a variation of hospitality to spread Christianity into Ireland. The people that filled this land were adversarial to Roman occupation and rule and have been labeled barbaric by the church; they were thus beyond hope (Winter et al. 2009) .

Patrick made an unprecedented move in that he took time to get to know the people he now lived among, the barbarians. This was unheard of in church circles. Because he took time to get to know them, to understand them, they believed that maybe his “high god” would too. Previous Roman models of evangelism had been based on presenting the gospel, asking for a decision then fellowship could happen. Patrick turned this system upside down. He sought fellowship first. He shared conversations and meals with people inviting them to fellowship first. He would then find joint projects that they could work on together. He played on shared communal interests. He would then move to belief and eventually to conversion. His method was incredibly successful and won of whole groups of people who had been labeled barbarians – people who were without sufficient knowledge or hope(Hunter 2000)
[2].

Hospitality as a mandate transcended time, travels and exiles of the Israelites and was with them solidly in the time of the New Testament. Jesus in his travels is dependent on the hospitality of others and often uses it to set the stage for his teachings (Matthew 26:6, Mark 1:29, 7:24,12:9, 2:15, 14:3, Luke 10:34, 11:4, 14:12, John 12:1-2). One of the more famous pictures is when Jesus receives hospitality from Mary and Martha in Luke 10:38-42 setting the stage for a moment of teaching (Ryken et al. 1998).

Jesus also setup hospitality as a rule for his followers and the missionaries that he sent out. His followers were sent out on the assumption that they would receive hospitality from host families in Matthew 10:9-14. Jesus then instructs them on how to handle what they will be given. He made it a marker for who would enter into the kingdom in Matthew 25:35 and villages that didn’t provide it are consigned to doom (Matthew 10:14-15, Mark 6:11, Luke 9:5). Jesus is keen as well to take homes like that of Zaccheus and transition them then leave them as places of hospitality (Luke 19:1-10)[1]. The life of the house owner does not have to be rejected. There is much work to be done there.

The gospel of Luke seems particularly interested in hospitality. This gospel alone gives us the story of the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, the Rich Man and Lazarus, Zaccheus and the Emmaus appearance of Jesus (Koenig 1992). In each of these stories it can easily be said that the guest is sacred. For Luke, whose Gospel probably had the largest gentile audience; the welcoming of outsiders seemed to be a key piece of Jesus character.

Hospitality did not come with out its hazards, as one pitfall that corrupted hospitality was the tendency of groups to neglect hospitality towards other ethnic groups. Jews and Samaritans are one example. Because of their disdain for each other they would serve only their own group and would steer clear of the other group. The story in Luke 11:5-8 shows us that hospitality is readily and easily offered to those who are like us, but it is harder when demanded by those that we label outside of our circles. Jesus’ teaching even point to the fact that hospitality must not be shown to only those who can reciprocate – this would be behaving as the pagans do. The parable of the banquet speaks to this idea (Luke 14:15-24, Matthew 22:1-14) (Destro 2003).

Hospitality for the people of God presents a struggle that has always existed and exists still to this day. The struggle is this: it is very easy to accept the position but the vocation is difficult. By this statement I mean that it has always been the struggle of God’s people to understand and live out our role as givers of love as quickly as we are willing to accept the position that receiving his love has given us. It is much easier to claim the position and set ones self up as judge of others than it is to take up the vocation of servant and see others as better than me.

The early church assimilated the idea of hospitality and service rapidly and continued with continuity the Jewish idea of hospitality that had been expanded upon by Jesus. The missionary efforts of the early church depended on hospitality for itinerate teachers and apostles (Alexander and Rosner 2000). Peter (Acts 10:6, 18, 23, 48) and Paul (Acts 16:15; 18:7; 21:4, 8, 16; 28:7) depended upon the hospitality of the Christian communities that they founded, discipled or travelled between. The New Testament has a number of instructions to extend or give hospitality (Romans 12:13; Hebrews 13:2; 1 Peter 4:9) and it is even considered a must for those who would be in leadership in the early church (1 Tim 3:2; Tit 1:8). Widows as well were given a special instruction in 1 Timothy 5:10 if they wanted to be put on the church lists (Ryken et al. 1998).

The early church as well regularly practiced the Eucharist, the good gift, and recognized it as a sign of God’s hospitality. Each time the Eucharist was taken, the costliness of the divine gift was remembered (Alexander and Rosner 2000). They also saw it as a foreshadowing of how hospitable God will be in the future when all the believers join him in the marriage supper of the Lamb (Rev 19:7-9). This regular gathering around God’s table served to inspire them towards the future and remind them of the Jubilee that was part of their past and present. Jesus while present reminded them, “But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.” (Luke 14:13 NRSV) (Russell, Clarkson, and Ott 2009)The visions of John end with a simple call that is a model for what the church is to be when he writes, “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’ And let everyone who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.” (Revelation 22:17 NRSV)

The tradition of hospitality carried its way into the early church years and evidenced by continued discussion about its practice. In the Didache (Did 11f.) travelling evangelists are said to have special privilege in receiving hospitality (Elliott 1986). The travelling preacher is to be given food enough to reach the next night’s lodgings and that if he asks for money he is a false prophet (Carson 1994). In Early Christian Hospitality D.W. Riddle uses the word “charming” when describing the hospitality of the early church. In a reference to patristic sources he notes,

These examples of hospitality suggest that the custom may account for a notable phenomenon of those days: the acceptance of the traveling preacher’s message by entire households…. that the primitive churches were house-churches is a detail of this, and an aspect of early Christian hospitality…. This brings the student directly to the social processes in Christianity’s expansion. One of them was early Christian hospitality. In it one sees an ultimate medium of Christianity’s growth. (Riddle 1938)

These early Christians saw themselves as resident aliens. Though they knew much of the surrounding culture they realized that they were different. Referencing the Letter to Diognetus, Husbands and Green in Ancient Faith for the Church’s Future paints the picture that for the early Christians every place was and was not their home or it could be said that every foreign land for them was their Fatherland, yet every Fatherland was a foreign land (Husbands and Greenman 2008). Jerome in more heart felt terms wrote that believers should “let the poor men and strangers be acquainted with your modest table, and with them Christ shall be your guest.” (Jerome)

Next: Hospitality, Part 3